the blog of LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange

Citizen dialog for transparent process

Activism

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Groundbreaking for solar power to save Dublin High 40%,
thus reducing teacher furloughs,
financed by municipal bonds,
made possible by cooperation among a wide range of
government officials, private companies, and individuals:
that was the groundbreaking story in Dublin, Laurens County, yesterday,
videod by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE.

City leaders, please, no more of the blame game. The citizens of
this community are imploring you to just accept responsibility and
fix it.

Yet the VDT has
spent the last week blaming the city,
and has accepted no responsibility for its own role, or that of
its editor, Kay Harris, in the recent loss of the SPLOST referendum
that would have further funded wastewater work in Valdosta.

DALTON, Ga. — Trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed
to lie below the hills of northwest Georgia have remained virtually
untouched and unwanted — until now.

Shale gas drilling is slowing across the country, but a handful of
companies are poking around this corner of the state looking for the
next natural gas "play." If they succeed, Georgia could join the
ranks of states reaping jobs, revenue and fears of environmental
damage from energy production, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has
learned....

In Alabama, the Conasauga shale field contains 625 trillion cubic
feet of gas, according to Bill Thomas, a geologist who taught at the
University of Kentucky and Georgia State. A similar amount could be
underground in Northwest Georgia, he added.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

Dublin gets the jump on the rest of Georgia again:
Dublin High School will get a megawatt of solar electricity
through a lease agreement with a private company
using local government bonds to get around Georgia's special financing problem.

Dublin High School of Dublin City Schools will soon implement
1 megawatt of solar energy.

The 4,000 panel solar power plant will be the largest in Central
Georgia and is expected to save the school 40 percent in energy
costs.

Dublin City Schools Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter told 13WMAZ, "The
facility will be built and owned by private business and the school
system will lease the solar power plant, saving us money in energy
costs."

The original plan was developed more than 15-months ago by German
based MAGE SOLAR, which has a plant located in Laurens County.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami
that heavily damaged four of the six nuclear reactors at
Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan on 11 March 2011, also known as 3/11.
The broken reactors at Fukushima continue to leak radioactive substances into
groundwater, the sea, and the air, where it is carried across oceans
to the U.S. and elsewhere.
And it could still get much worse:
if the No. 4 reactor pool, still suspended in the air, collapses and causes
the disintegration of spent fuel rods from all the other reactors there,
Tokyo, 200 miles away, will have to be evacuated.
Fukushima's GE reactors are the same GE Mark I design as Southern Company's
Plant Hatch 1 and 2 only 100 miles from here at Baxley, GA,
and about 200 miles from Atlanta and Charleston.
Hatch
is leaking radioactive tritium into our groundwater again.
Five more reactors
within 500 miles of here
are also GE Mark I.

Among the 311 or so facebook pages and websites about Fukushima
or against nuclear power is this concise one,
Unplug Nuclear Power,
which offers a simple action anyone can take tomorrow:

On 3/11, we will mark Fukushima day by using as little utility
supplied electricity as possible. This direct Action is designed to
punish the utility companies for continuing to push for nuclear
power even after the Fukushima disaster has proven that it is just
too dangerous. On that day, we will punish them in the only way that
they understand, by denying them our money. There will be four
levels of participation, go to the website,
www.unplugnuclearpower.com for a more complete description. Also, be
sure to join the Event. Finally, if you are in a group our
organization that can endorse this Action, please let us know.

Saturday, 09 March 2013

On the 27th of February I posted
Internet and Energy at the Bird Supper
and Gretchen and I went to the Bird Supper in Atlanta and discussed
those four bills with legislators.
Our local elected officials were lobbying on the same side of many of
the same bills.
It's past crossover day now, when bills are supposed to be
approved by one house of the Georgia legislature in order to be
taken up by the other.
How did that come out?
We all beat the mighty telcos and cablecos on two bills!
But Georgia Power is even mightier, and won on two bills.
Plus one legislator's name is connected with 3 out of 4 of those bills.
And our local delegation cancelled itself out on the one vote
that actually went to the floor.

Internet Access: help stop two telecommunications bills

The local Industrial Authority, Chamber of Commerce, Valdosta City Council,
and Lowndes County Commission have recently realized that
fast Internet access is essential to attract businesses,
for their employees to work at home, for applicants to apply for jobs,
for students to submit assignments, and for general quality of life.
And there's good news from the legislature!

WASHINGTON—March 8—A secret Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
report released today confirms that Southern California Edison knew
about serious problems in the radically redesigned replacement steam
generators for the San Onofre nuclear reactors years before the
defective equipment was installed, yet failed to make changes to fix
the problems. The report was released today by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission after Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and
Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) revealed its existence and
demanded it be made public.

Wednesday, 06 March 2013

The sinkhole that formed under a man's bed and pulled him in has
made a lot of news in Florida, plus another one a few miles away.
But the news seems to neglect why those sinkholes are forming.
Could it be the same reason sinkholes are forming in Lowndes County, Georgia?
And will the Lowndes County Commission do anything about that
before we see news about somebody here falling into a sinkhole?

Jeremy Bush just went to bed when he heard what sounded like a car
hitting the house. Then screams from his brother Jeffrey's bedroom.

"Help me! Help me!"

Someone flipped the lights. Jeremy, 36, threw the door open,
revealing a sight that defied belief: The earth had opened beneath
his brother's bedroom and was swallowing everything in it. The tip
of Jeffrey's mattress was the only thing left, and it was sinking
into a churning sinkhole.

The Tampa Bay Times has a long series on what happened afterwards,
rescue workers who didn't find him, the demolition of the house,
objects found, etc.
They never quite get around to saying why the sinkhole was there.
They first say
(Shelley Rossetter 2 March 2013),

Tuesday, 05 March 2013

Solar power is going so well worldwide that Deutsche Bank has just
increased its projections for global demand,
noting that India and Italy have already in 2013 reached grid parity
without subsidies with other sources of energy,
and it expects the rest of the world to follow as early as 2014.
The big winner is rooftop solar.
Is Georgia paying attention?

The German bank has raised its 2013 global solar demand forecast to
30 GW — representing a 20% year-on-year increase — on
the back of suggestions of strong demand in markets including India,
the U.S., China (around 7 to 10 GW), the U.K. (around 1 to 2 GW),
Germany and Italy (around 2 GW).

Rooftop installations are, in particular, expected to be a main
focus, says Deutsche Bank. A trend for projects being planned with
either "minimal/no incentives" has also been observed, despite the
belief that solar policy outlooks are improving, particularly in the
U.S., China and India, and "other emerging markets".